Irfan Önürmen by C24 Gallery

POWERFUL BLASTS OF IMAGES

BY MARCUS GRAF

İrfan Önürmen, a leading figure within the contemporary art scene of Istanbul, has created work over the last 20 years that is conceptually coherent and stringent as well as formally complex and pluralistic. His oeuvre consists of paintings and drawings on canvas and (news)paper, tulle works as well as objects and installations made of newspapers. The artist critically analyzes the current state of society through the deconstruction of media representations of political issues as well as of incidents within the common lives of ordinary men. Anonymous figures struggle to get along inside the mess of the heterogeneous urban chaos they are exposed to day by day.

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Ä°rfan Ă&#x2013;nĂźrmen, a leading figure within the contemporary art scene of Istanbul, has created work over the last 20 years that is conceptually coherent and stringent as well as formally complex and pluralistic. His oeuvre consists of paintings and drawings on canvas and (news)paper, tulle works as well as objects and installations made of newspapers. The artist critically analyzes the current state of society through the deconstruction of media representations of political issues as well as of incidents within the common lives of ordinary men. Anonymous figures struggle to get along inside the mess of the heterogeneous urban chaos they are exposed to day by day.

FLASHBACK

His work begins in the late 1980s; İrfan Önürmen started to paint fragmented images of faceless figures that invited the spectator to actively complete the piece in order to become involved and engaged in the depicted scene. His paintings formed a cri06

tique of the mutation of visibility and publicity in the media, in which the cruellest images serve the people’s hunger for sensation and spectacle. The works’ socio-political engagement resulted from his critical social and political awareness. Besides canvas pieces, he has produced drawings and paintings on newspaper as well as collages created out of newspaper images dating back to his years as a student. There, often a single figure stared directly at the spectator in order to build a relationship with him, though the work’s protagonist was never able to

FLASHBACK

express anything but an empty gaze. Loneliness surrounded the figure, underlining the superficial relationship between real everyday incidents and their representation in the newspaper. A different form of critique took place more explicitly within his installations and objects built out of newspapers. There, as now, the artist used newspapers to create six archives of human (hi)stories, where he, e.g., constructed a Terror Factory or a New Baghdad Museum. Here, Önürmen used newspapers as material to create environmental interventions that contained a direct political and social critique. The last work group in his oeuvre was based on tulle pieces and installations with tulle. There, besides dealing with questions of society and the impact of media on the construction of reality, he was very much concerned with the creation of a painting itself, as he questioned interior painterly and artistic issues like space, layering or figure.

THE CURRENT SHOW AT C24 GALLERY

For İrfan Önürmen’s first solo show in a gallery in the U.S., C24 presents a variety of pieces from different groups of work. Next to examples from various tulle series, the artist exhibits parts of his sixth archive (Panic Series Relief), one newspaper sculpture as well as a series of monochrome but figurative paintings entitled

Crime Watching. Önürmen started this series, which continues today, in 2006. The single works of Crime Watching consist of different materials and show various conceptual and formal layers. On the back of the canvases, the artist painted scenes that appear as unknown yet familiar. Observing the work closely, the spectator understands As these have a great influence on the pool of our visual culture, and on the way we understand reality, İrfan Önürmen deconstructs their content and aesthetic matters in order to reveal a danger that underlines all mass media today; Crime Watching deals with the issue of passively following crime on TV. At home, we watch the brutality and cruelty of incidents that we already know exist. We do not learn about jobbery, political failures, acts of terror or construction disasters in the news. We know them; we live with them. Nevertheless, still we watch and, agape, consume the unstoppable stream of images. İrfan Önürmen reverses the act of passively watching by creating his own visual versions of reality. After shooting hundreds of pictures from the TV screen, he chooses the ones that suit his artistic, aesthetic and conceptual interest. For the artist, these images illustrate the current state of Turkey, as they form a conglomerate of urgent social and political matters. His paintings are like counter-strikes against the subjective camera, editing and presentation of information, with which media experts try to create a visual-psychophysical impact on the audience at home.

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that the motives of the paintings originate from television images.

İrfan Önürmen takes these images as the theoretical and formal base of his series. On the ground of the canvases, he paints parts of the scenes of the TV screen in a fragmental and expressive way. Still, unlike the tele-reality, the artist does not claim to 08

reveal truth, as he is not interested in producing knowledge and his deconstruction of reality is not based on scientific terms and methods. He uses the chaos of our existence as the ground for forming artistic discussions, which question the world we live in. Önürmen is not interested in personal or individual stories, but rather in the way society functions. His focus therefore is

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not micro but macro. That is why the artist is mostly hiding the face of the protagonists of his scenes. If the identity is unknown, the figure turns into a symbol without personal story or history, so that the spectators can put themselves into the image and become part of it. In an early stage of his career, the artist decided to erase the face, because he was more interested in the general effect of the painting than in any individual story. During the creation of his works, the artist follows the idea of an all-over composition without a center; he feels no difference between the creation of a figurative or abstract painting regarding their plasticity. Nevertheless, the concern of the works is never intrinsic or selfcontained, but social and political; the scenes on the canvases are always related to human existence and social and cultural behavior, in which often brutal and destructive actions are leading to the consumption of human life itself. Onto the background of the paintings of Crime Watching, on layers of tulle that overlap the previously painted incidents, Önürmen introduces parts of figures and objects, which clash with the ones on the ground. The mix of different materials and elements creates a chaos, in which the spectators have to find their own

sense of meaning. This activation of the audience, which calls for the participation of the spectator in the decoding of the image, is a basic characteristic that can be found in all the other series by Önürmen. The heterogeneous formal and materialistic characters, as well as the different artistic matters of the works, refer to

the various layers of and within society. This interest in layers is a basic issue in his work. In Crime Watching, Önürmen combines painting on canvas with parts created with tulles, because he believes that the different materials formulate a dynamic within the work. For him, brush and paint give the piece a hard and expressive character, whereas tulle creates the feeling of lightness, poetry and transparency.

also reveals important conceptual issues like the presentation of reality in the media and the issue of passively watching instead of actively acting. This brings us to the discussion of another group of works that İrfan Önürmen exhibits at C24 Gallery under the title of Gaze Series. Here, without using any paint, he created large, mainly monochrome, sometimes softly colored portraits of young people. The men and woman seem familiar, but remain anonymous, as — in spite of their familiar look — their identities remain unknown. The portraits do not reflect any real person, as they are virtual and fictional inventions of the artist. Önürmen calls them “internet types,” referring to photos of people that circle in millions of web sites all around the globe. After an intensive study of these “profile pictures,” the artist combines various portraits in his work in order to develop his own model of a face. Although it looks like a portrait, the face we see is a fictional character that is developed in the artist’s mind. Nevertheless, it seems familiar, because we

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Crime Watching gives the audience a good introduction to his oeuvre, as it shows his treatment of layers, color, paint and tulle. It

live with these photographic representations that surround us in real and virtual realities. Önürmen’s depicted people show no facile expression or emotion, though they are not afraid to look, as they stare directly into 10

the camera without any rejection or hesitation. Due to the detail of the photo, nothing but the face is visible. No space or object gives a clue about the story or history of the figure. Silent and cold, the figure gazes, as it waits for an action of the spectator to which it could react. For Önürmen, these images can function as metaphors for the current state of the digitized way we share private information

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and build up personal communication. His works refer to the results of our current form of virtual communication; a digital solitude surrounds the inhabitants of the digital age. While anything and everything is possible, as well as visible and reachable for us, a strange emptiness leads to passivity in the land of plenty. The works of the Gaze Series consist of seven layers of tulle in various white and grey tones. Softly colored portraits form an exception within this series. Aesthetically, the portraits refer to the computer, as the tulle’s texture resembles pixel structures. The whole look of the portrait, which is based on geometrical forms, draws connections to early vector graphics. On the other hand, these pieces show a relationship to the cubistic and expressionistic portraits of the classic modern avant-garde. Paintings of Braque and Picasso as well as woodcut prints of Nolde may come to one’s mind while looking at the Gaze Series. Instead of working with paint and brush though, Önürmen here prefers tulle and scissors. The use of this light fabric results from his general interest in layers as well as in figurative abstraction. In his early paintings and collages, he was already interested in combining heterogeneous elements in order to develop a pluralis-

tic aesthetic, in which the work should possess various formal and conceptual layers. Besides this, the creation of space and depth in the art of painting was always of special interest to him. In the tulle works, Önürmen has found a way to propel this artistic interest, as there is a tactile quality regarding their space, dimension

and material. In a traditional painting, space only exists as a reproduction, illusion or reference to the “real” space. It is an illusion, which forms a stage for the protagonist of the painting. In İrfan Önürmen’s tulle works, the spectator can virtually and physically enter the work due to the material of the pieces. He gives tulle the role that paint occupies in classic painting. As the painter uses layers of conceptual depth for his scene on and between the tulle layers. İrfan Önürmen presents the tulle works in Plexiglas boxes in order to protect them. At the same time, he uses this exhibition method because it supports the feeling of depth and space, as it is a space itself. Also, it assembles the layers of the piece and therefore supports its visual-psychophysical impact on our senses. Besides this, the box underlines the fragile, yet cold and artificial character of the tulle layers. As tulle and scissors are “colder” than paint and brush, here the presentation method supports the aesthetic of the tulle works; they reference the emotionless reality that we are all exposed to, and in which we constantly struggle to find meaning in the disastrous state in which we live. In İrfan Önürmen’s works, as in life, meaning is always hidden behind the obvious. In the artist’s tulle pieces, the spectator is asked to see between the various layers in order to understand the work. Thus, they need a spectator who actively observes instead of passively accepts. This notion of art is even more obvious in the tulle compositions showing street scenes within the Gaze Series. The figures of

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paint to create a certain tone, Önürmen creates a physical and

MARCUS GRAF

the works are not alone as they are in the portraits, but here are in the company of other people. Besides this, their environment is clearly marked and visually distinguished. Walking or standing on the streets of a big city, the protagonists are captured by 14

the camera while they are involved in an action. Again, different from the portraits, the scenes are depicted in a hasty snap-shotaesthetic, where the identity of the people is hidden, their faces blurred. Nevertheless, cloth and space give us hints about the life of the people, who we understand as city dwellers in their daily rush in the streets of a metropolis like Istanbul. Again, the images seem familiar, as they resemble images from newspapers

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and magazines, though everything is constructed fiction. Here, artifice and illusion mislead the audience and reveal the ease of betraying them in the traps of their expectations and clichés. In the Gaze Series, as in a collage, İrfan Önürmen combines various elements from different visual sources to create works that claim to be trustful and reliable images of reality, though actually nothing fits and nothing belongs together. Nevertheless, the pictures make perfect sense! This notion of “sense” and “meaning” finds its counterpart in urban life, where clashes of traditions, cultures and shifts are forming a polyphonic symphony of chaos and disorder. There, no religious, political or scientific expert can promise absolute truth, meaning or sense, as the world is broken in uncountable pieces, out of which reflections of reality can only be subjectively reassembled by the spectator. This understanding of our contemporary world underlies the artistic notion and approach of İrfan Önürmen, as he gives the spectator the responsibility of forming his own world view. Out of the layers of tulles, and their various figures, objects, tones and elements, he has to create his own image, which to a certain degree becomes an individual reflection of his reality.

This approach is also visible in the series of 22 small tulle portraits shown at C24 Gallery. Here, the spectator is confronted with blurred black and white images of 22 men and women. Different from the large portraits, these images are more mysterious and hidden; the depicted people appear like ghosts. İrfan Önürmen

makes the decoding of these works even more difficult, as he covers their faces with commonly known symbols. Signs for money, a Playboy Bunny, atomic energy, weapons and other socially or politically important matters hide the character and identity of the people. At the same time, seen as a whole, the series reflects on the current state of Turkey. Nevertheless, the relation between the sign and the portrait is unclear and subjective, so that the conglomerate of people and signs. In Eight Women, another tulle series in which the artist combines portraits with objects, he deals with the representation of female victims of domestic violence and killing in Turkish newspapers. There, the relationship between the presented people and the killing instruments is more obvious and understandable, as Önürmen aimed at taking a clear stance against violence. The small Gaze Series, though, is more subversive, complex and mysterious. The task of understanding the works gets even more difficult, when the spectator steps back from a single portrait and starts to observe the series, which is seen by Önürmen as one coherent work, as a whole. There, the relationship between the single portraits and their signs, but also the connection between the various works of the series, forms a wider discussion. In a single work, one observes a part of a socio-political micro-discussion. As a whole, the series reveals the complexity and heterogeneity of society by opening up a pluralistic macro-perspective on the world the artist lives in.

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intuition of the spectator is asked to draw conclusions out of the

C24 Gallery also shows a large tulle work entitled Camouflage. Here, İrfan Önürmen is formally driven by the question of how, in the most minimal way, he can create a tulle work. The artist decided to use a cut-out method, where he takes out various parts within the 16

seven layers of white tulle to create the illusion of form and figure. In this way, the sense of depth and space is created through the erasing of material, where empty spots within the layers of tulles form the details of the protagonists of the work’s scene. The spectator sees in the work a group of American soldiers walking through a desert. From a distance, the group approaches the observer, walks in his direction. Although the piece evokes as-

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sociations like Operation Desert Storm or other military activities that we have witnessed live on TV, the actual scene remains unknown, unclear and arbitrary. The figures seem not only to walk in the desert but also in the space between the layers of tulles. Once again, Önürmen’s play with illusion and physical space is important for the understanding of this work. The work’s title refers to the clothes of the soldiers, the process of hiding in between the tulle layers, as well as being hidden behind the screens of the media industry. Once again, the interconnection between formal and conceptual complexity in İrfan Önürmen’s work becomes obvious. In the end of this text, I would like to discuss a last series, which is presented at C24 Gallery. The Panic Series Relief, including a figurative sculpture standing in front of the relief, shows fragments of incidents of politics and terror taking place in Turkey and abroad. In earlier archives and installations, İrfan Önürmen stacked paper, glued the stacks together and cut them into models of real objects, which carry references to concrete social or political incidents. In general, the used newspapers in these works do not have any additional drawing or painting. The pieces cause a great alienation effect by turning the newspapers into realistic looking

three-dimensional objects like guns, bombs or historical sculptures and artifacts. In the Panic Series Relief, the artist proposes a contemporary version of the relief, where he combines forms and concepts of contemporary art with current issues of local and global historical

incidents. The relief, through its possibility of presenting images following one after another, has the capacity to reveal incidents in changing times and changing situations. Therefore, it is a great medium for telling stories. İrfan Önürmen’s relief questions the notion of panic in today’s society. The fear of war, earthquakes, economical crisis and other threats creates a social environment of permanent subversive or obvious panic. This fear, which has bebe misused for political interests, as seen in politics all around the world. In this context, Önürmen’s Panic Series Relief focuses particularly on representations of feared incidents in the media; the artist reveals how the media reflects and prepares the ground for society’s panic at the same time. Cutting into the layers and stacks of newspapers, he highlights certain people, objects and incidents by erasing all textual and visual details around them. In this way, the audience can concentrate on aspects of everyday life from a new perspective, where the relations between the emphasized are intuitive and open. That is why the works are not didactic. They do not imply a one-dimensional critique of the audience, but open up new possibilities of connections and relations in order to go beyond classic or cliché-like notions of truth and reality. For Önürmen, social relations are never simple. That is why, as the world is fragmented and broken in pieces, the artist can only present his view of the world and ask the spectator to have a look on his own. The reliefs are therefore like puzzles with missing parts, which have to be formed by the spectator. He is asked to

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came a dominant emotional state in modern societies, can easily

give up his passive spectator role for becoming an active creator. The sculptural figure in the exhibition space, which is observing the relief, resembles a manager, boss, or leader. Made out of the same material as the world he observes, he evaluates his work, 18

a world of panic and disasters that he has helped to create. So we see that İrfan Önürmen fights in his Panic Series Relief against today’s visual overload and news pollution by individualizing the images and creating his own ‘page layout,’ where he uses the newspaper as material and content, in order to criticize the

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media system from within the system itself.

CONCLUSION

The exhibition at C24 Galley shows that İrfan Önürmen is a transdisciplinary artist, who over the last 20 years has developed a work that follows an aesthetic of the sublime while revealing the destructive methods of the media. His oeuvre is about the process of creating and receiving visual information, observing

the world and decoding images as well as creating a painting. Also it deals with the interconnection between first (natural) and second (media) reality, as the artist produces his own critically rendered versions. Önürmen is guided by mistrust against any notion of generalized reality or promise of absolute truth. The spectator of his works therefore is invited to participate in the pieces by fulfilling their fragmental syntax. He might find bits of reality between the heavy strokes of brush, the sentences of the newspaper objects ment that connects İrfan Önürmen with the spectator, an attempt to reveal the inhuman methods of the money-hungry image industry, and a struggle for the possibility of getting a glimpse of meaning inside the heterogeneous chaos of today. That is why his work has a great significance; he reaches far beyond the classic notions and roles of art in order to take an artistic stand, which is aesthetically refreshing and critically deep at the same time.

Assist. Prof. Dr., Yeditepe University, Fine Arts Faculty, Arts Management Dep., Istanbul (Resident Curator, Plato Sanat, Istanbul). Parts of this text are based on “İrfan Önürmen - Calm like a Bomb,” PI-Artworks, Istanbul, 2010.

CONCLUSION

or the layers of the tulle works. It is social concern and engage-

Collector, 2009, newspaper, H 65.35 in. (166 cm)

Panic Series Relief (detail), 2009, newspaper, 22.05 x 984.25 in. (56 x 2500 cm)

Camouflage, 2004, tulle, 7 layers, 78.74 x 118.11 x 27.56 in. (200 x 300 x 70 cm)

Crime Watching, 2006-2012, oil and tulle on canvas, 94.49 x 157.48 in. (240 x 400 cm)

Football, 2002, tulle and textile material, 59.06 x 76.77 x 3.94 in. (150 x 195 x 10 cm)

Night Series III, 2008, tulle and textile material, 68.9 x 76.77 x 3.94 in. (175 x 195 x 10 cm)

Self Portrait, 2012, tulle, 4 layers, 78.74 x 110.24 in. (200 x 280 cm)

GAZE SERIES

Gaze Series #12, 2012, tulle, 77.95 x 53.54 in. (198 x 136 cm)

Gaze Series #13, 2012, tulle, 77.95 x 51.18 in. (198 x 130 cm)

Gaze Series #16, 2012, tulle, 77.95 x 51.18 in. (198 x 130 cm)

Gaze Series #19, 2012, tulle, 77.95 x 51.18 in. (198 x 130 cm)

Gaze Series #20, 2012, tulle, 77.95 x 55.91 in. (198 x 142 cm)

Gaze Series #15, 2012, tulle, 77.95 x 51.18 in. (198 x 130 cm)

Gaze Series #17, 2012, tulle, 51.18 x 77.95 in. (130 x 198 cm)

TODAY SERIES

Top Right: Today Series #22, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Top Left: Today Series #21, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Bottom Right: Today Series #25, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Bottom Left: Today Series #24, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Today Series #27, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Today Series #23, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Top Right: Today Series #31, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Top Left: Today Series #30, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Bottom Right: Today Series #34, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Bottom Left: Today Series #33, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Today Series #35, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Top Right: Today Series #36, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Bottom Right: Today Series #38, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Top Left: Today Series #32, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Bottom Left: Today Series #37, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Today Series #39, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Today Series #28, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Top Right: Today Series #41, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Top Left: Today Series #40, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Bottom Right: Today Series #29, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Bottom Left: Today Series #42, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

Today Series #26, 2012, paint on tulle, 4 layers, 15.35 x 11.42 in. (39 x 29 cm)

c24 gallery 514 West 24th Street New York, NY 10011 +1 (646) 416 6300 c24gallery.com

This book is published in conjuction with the exhibition: İrfan Önürmen C24 Gallery May 4 — June 16, 2012 © 2012, C24 Gallery All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without prior permission from the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-615-62720-5 LOC: 2012937180 Founded by Maide & Emre Kurttepeli, Asli & Erkut Soyak and Mel Dogan. Executive Director: Kristen Lynn Johnston Design by Kyle LaMar Edited by Ellen Lubell Printed in New York by Earth Enterprise

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